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Back to the Future Day

It’s hard to believe but the future finally arrived. Wait a moment, what future we talking about? A future with hoverboards and where “Jaws 19” hits theaters? No, no that future, but a future with big-screen TVs and videoconferencing, news drones, hands-free video games and video glasses, yes. So, let’s celebrate because today, 21th October, 2015 is Back to the Future Day!

The Future is Today

In “Back to the Future Part II”, Marty McFly travels to October 21, 2015, to save his children, yet to be born in “Back to the Future’s” 1985. For fans, this is the day that has been 30 years in the making. Cinemas across the world are showing one-off screenings of the films to celebrate October 21, 2015, the date shown on his DeLorean time machine’s dash board.

The plot gets tangled — by fixing one thing, McFly and Doc Brown (and the villainous Biff Tannen) create a number of new messes — but what remains is the film’s vision of a year that was still more than a quarter-century away when the movie was shot and released in 1989. The entire trilogy is even being rereleased this Wednesday, so you can see for yourself in some theater near you.

The film’s record isn’t bad, given that director Robert Zemeckis wasn’t pleased with setting part of “Back to the Future II” in 2015. “I always hated — and I still don’t like — movies about the future,” he says in a new book, Back to the Future: The Ultimate Visual History. “I just think they’re impossible, and somebody’s always keeping score.”

In the Internet age, Zemeckis has grounds for concern. Over the past few years, Photoshopped images of “Future’s” DeLorean time machine have popped up on the Web, insisting that TODAY is “Back to the Future Day.” And now that the day has actually arrived, there have been countless articles and videos about what the film and its screenwriter, Bob Gale, got right about 2015.

As with other movies dealing with the future, such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” (set in the early 2000s) or “Blade Runner” (set in 2019, which will be here before you know it), the predictions of “Back to the Future II” are hit or miss: big-screen TVs, yes, Mr. Fusion, no; virtual-reality goggles, yes, “Jaws 19,” no.

Coincidentally, perhaps the most important invention in the film is one behind the scenes: the VistaGlide motion-control system, a computer-operated camera operation that enabled Michael J. Fox to seamlessly share all those scenes with himself. The software was written by an Industrial Light & Magic developer, Bill Tondreau, specifically for the movie and was a milestone in moviemaking technology.

Still, it says something about the popularity of the trilogy that here we are, 26 years after the release of “Back to the Future II” (and 30 years after “Back to the Future”), and we care enough to “keep score.” Even “Back to the Future” stars Fox and Christopher Lloyd discuss the topic in a new Toyota ad. Source:CNN.

Back to the Future Day: Doc Brown’s Message to You

As today, 21th October, is the day Emmett Lathrop “Doc” Brown, Ph.D. will arrive in the present from his “own time” of 1985 as was fictionalised in the now-classic 1980s film Back to the Future, and to honour the day, Christopher Lloyd has delivered a message to us living in the present.

“Great Scott, if my calculations are correct it is now precisely October 21, 2015.The future has finally arrived.Yes, it is different than we all thought.But don’t worry, it just means your future hasn’t been written yet. No one’s has.Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one.”